If he were really smart, he'd have made his hand as wide as possible and pulled it down as far as possible while the cuffs went on. But he's apparantly Merle, and Merle only knows three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Merle way... Merle's way is the wrong way only faster, so he went with that.

Is there really only one more episode after last night? Eesh, hope not, this is severely addictive.

Five episodes in now, I think we've established that the best formula for the show is equal measures human interest/zombie killin'. They just need to work on the pacing a little to smooth this out on an episode by episode basis. We've now had 2 episodes that were mostly all talking and very little zombie action. That's a little slow and uneven, IMO. I prefer 30 minutes of the drama and 30 minutes of action, blended appropriately.

That said, even the less action packed episodes are pretty dang riveting, and always filled with at least 2-3 very memorable scenes. Loved the abused woman going to town on her dead husband's skull with the pick axe. Loved the last scene with Jim under the tree. Loved the hat-guy (maybe my favorite character in the show) totally busting Shane locking down on Rick in the woods. (Why the sudden heel turn though? I was just starting to like him again)

Liking the new angle with the CDC guy too. (Wish they had done better with the microscope close-up though, that seemed really cheesy somehow) I wonder if his lament over the lack of fresh tissue samples to study will lead them to try and retrieve Jim's body at some point. Figured dude would be at least a little happy to see other survivors though, guess not so much.

Loved the hat-guy (maybe my favorite character in the show) totally busting Shane locking down on Rick in the woods. (Why the sudden heel turn though? I was just starting to like him again)

I too didn't like the darker turn that Shane took, but it just goes to show the character is human. He was tempted to eliminate the "problem" that was going to put everyone in danger. I think my ultimate judgement of the character depends on what he would've done had hat-guy not shown up.

He was tempted to eliminate the "problem" that was going to put everyone in danger.

That wasn't the only reason he was tempted to take Rick out.

Hat-Guy's name is Dale, and he's played by Jeffrey DeMunn who's been in all of Frank Darabont's projects. (Not being an ******* here--I didn't know his name or the character's name, either, so I had to look this **** up, myself.) Really liked him in Green Mile, and I really like him here, too.

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"The good news is that all that blood is actually ketchup. The bad news, however, is that all that ketchup is actually blood."

Liking the new angle with the CDC guy too. (Wish they had done better with the microscope close-up though, that seemed really cheesy somehow) I wonder if his lament over the lack of fresh tissue samples to study will lead them to try and retrieve Jim's body at some point. Figured dude would be at least a little happy to see other survivors though, guess not so much.

Well, he's researching and these people with their problems show up, so....another hassle to deal with.

On the other hand, he's near suicide at this point, from frustration or lonliness or whatever. Guess we'll find out next week (or year.)

I don't understand why they weren't picking up assault rifles from the dead army personel. I realize they wanted to be quiet, but come on...

Sucks that it'll be a year before episode 7. That's what stinks about these cable shows. Shorter seasons and longer wait.

One thing we got from the CDC guy, a timeline. He said in the one recording that it was 193 or 195 (something like that) days since the virus got out and 160-something since it went global. But, we don't know exactly when he made that recording in relation to our gang showing up. Still, that's 6 months which is damn fast to wipe out the world.

As for the gang not picking up rifles, that's a huge, tremendously HUGE, pet peeve of mine. It seems that nearly all movies and TV shows do the same thing. The hero is walking around with limited weapons and ammo and never picks up the guns lying around. And when they do, which is rare, the film/show always treats it like a surprise to the audience hoping we'll have that "Oh, ****, he totally owned that bad guy that thought he was all out of ammo and **** by picking up the dead guy's gun and totally using it! ****, that wus ******' awesome."

E...

Logged

"I sell the drugs that keep you people from seeing dragons at night." - Gus "Psych"

I probably need to look more closely, but are there assault rifles just lying around? I've noticed the machine guns (.50 cal on the ground and tank) and vehicles, but nothing smaller. I'm no firearm expert, but I imagine that several months of no usage while exposed to the elements will not do wonders for a weapon. That has been my justification for the survivors not taking the military weapons... though why they wouldn't take the tank is beyond me.

I watched the CDC arrival parts twice, there's a rifle on the sandbags (plus another .50 caliber heavy mg, a heavy item that would take time to move and transport.)

Tanks are slow and use a lot of fuel. Besides, who'd have experience operating one?

But why the "Vatos" in said episode were intent on the bag of guns that'd been there a day but hadn't got the .50 caliber mg from the sandbagged position that was likely there for weeks is questionable, especially with operational cars and strong guys who could load it up fairly fast.